Olympic anecdotes

The Swedish Magda Julin left the spectators open-mouthed who approached the Palais de Glace d'Anvers to enjoy the women's ice skating championship on 25 April. First, for her exquisite performance which earned the gold medal; second, because she was four months pregnant.

Julin was the only woman in Olympic history to obtain a gold—but not the only one to intervene in the Games—with a tot inside. In fact, the German Cornelia Pfohl did not participate pregnant in only Olympiad, but in two: in Sydney 2000 she won the bronze medal gestating her first daughter, and in Athens 2004, of her second child. Cornelia acted in the archery contest, a sport that did not put her condition at risk. In the Greek capital, the German was pregnant for thirty weeks, and said goodbye without entering the podium. 'I decided to compete because I felt very good and the doctors had guaranteed me that there would be no problems. I would never have accepted if they told me there were risks,' proclaimed the archer. Another interesting case was protagonised by the American Juno Stover-Irwin, who intervened in the contest of diving in Helsinki 1952 with a gravity of almost four months. Her condition was not a problem to obtain a bronze medal. Four years later, in Melbourne, the American deployed a more daring routine and took the silver medal.

❇❇❇

'Take this and you will be invincible,' the French coach told Joseph Guillemot. Although he trusted his boy, the trainer did not know how he would respond to the demanding 5000 meters, especially after having breathed toxic gases in the Great War, fighting against the Germans.

Some doctors had even considered that the exposure to poisonous vapours had ruined Guillemot's lungs. The runner drank the mysterious concoction and on 17 August he jumped onto the track of Beerschot Stadium to face fourteen opponents, including the Finnish Paavo

Nurmi, a great favourite. Just two laps after the start, the French and the Finn took the lead of the race and increased their advantage with each turn. The head-to-head dispute was vibrant until just 200 meters from the finishing line, where Guillemot took off with a bright sprint and won the gold medal. After hugging his coach, the happy winner wanted to know what the mysterious and miraculous potion contained. The coach smiled for a moment, to put a quota of suspense to his response, and replied that it was only a mixture of rum, water and egg yolks.

On 20 August, the 10,000-meter final, where once again Guillemot and Nurmi faced each other, was scheduled for 5:30 pm. However, at the request of King Albert I of Belgium, who wished to witness the duel but also attend an art exhibition that afternoon, the organisers advanced the race three hours. The Frenchman, who had enjoyed a Pantagruelic lunch, protested the decision and demanded that the original schedule be maintained. Given the refusal of the judges, he had no choice but to go out on the track with a full stomach. Likewise, he had to wear borrowed shoes, two larger numbers, because his had been stolen in the locker room. As in the previous contest, Nurmi and Guillemot led the squad with slack. This time, however, the one who dominated the final sprint was the Finn, who finished the competition at 31:45.8, just a second and a half ahead of the Frenchman. Guillemot approached to greet the winner, but a second before shaking his hand he vomited all his lunch on Nurmi's shoes. The Finn did not stop smiling despite the unpleasant incident. The Frenchman wanted to know why his winner had not suffered stomach cramps, like him. Nurmi explained that he had also been surprised by the advancement of the race, but he had not been affected by any indisposition because he had the habit of following a very frugal diet based on fish and whole wheat bread. With this victory, the remarkable Finnish runner began a golden Olympic career that accumulated nine golds in three Games.

❇❇❇

The American teenager Elizabeth Robinson was so nervous that when she appeared on the track of the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam for the 100-meter final race, on the morning of 31 July, she noticed blushing that she had worn two left foot slippers. The sixteen-year-old girl did not need warm-up exercises for the competition: the spectacle caused by the show and the race she had to do to change her right shoe were enough. 'Betty' was a few seconds after being eliminated because of her delay in recomposing her outfit, but at the moment of truth she left her anxiety at the starting line. When the opening shot of the contest was fired, the young woman exploded and in 12.2 seconds, a world record, she won the first gold medal as a woman athlete. In June 1931, while preparing to repeat gold in Los Angeles, Robinson was traveling aboard a plane that crashed near the city of Harvey, in the state of Illinois. Rescuers who found her among the twisted irons of the airplane thought she had died like most passengers. One of them placed her next to a corpse in the trunk of a car and took her directly to a funeral home. However, the sprinter's time had not come yet: an employee who was going to prepare Betty for her funeral discovered that the girl had not died, but she was in a coma. Robinson, who had suffered multiple fractures, including her hip and one leg, was admitted to a hospital, where she remained unconscious for seven months. Four years after the terrible incident, Robinson had not only overcome her injuries, but had returned to the tracks. In a preparatory tournament for the Games of Berlin 1936, the runner reached the record necessary to join the team that would compete in the 4x100 relay. On 9 August 1936, along with Helen Stephens (the new champion in the 100 meters), Harriet Bland and Annette Rogers, the woman who returned from the death hung the gold medal around her neck.

❇❇❇

Adolf Hitler did not like football. Moreover, according to some historians, he hated it. The Führer, who preferred athletic sports, more in line with his military passion and the integral development of the body, nevertheless accepted it as a part of the Olympic tournament. On 4 August, while Hitler enjoyed the track and field tests at the Olympiastadion, his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels approached him, and in his ear, told him that a couple of kilometers away, in the Poststadion, the German team had just destroyed the Luxembourg 9–0. Goebbels told his boss that for many Germans, 'winning a game is more important than capturing a city in the East,' and convinced him to occupy the privileged seat in the Poststadion box three days later, when the strong German squad would face the supposedly weak Norway. Reluctantly, Hitler accepted, and on 7 August, attended the match with 55,000 of his countrymen. However, what seemed like a simple procedure for the locals became a Nordic hit. Seven minutes to the beginning, Magnar Isaksen beat the local goalkeeper Hans Jackob in the bewildered face of the Führer, who was looking at Goebbels for explanations. The nervous minister tried to apologise, but at 83 minute, Isaksen scored again to seal the Norwegian victory. While the visitors were celebrating the goal, the chancellor stood up from his seat, and throwing sparks and curses, escaped from the stadium followed by his minister and a waterfall of excuses. That was the only football match witnessed by Hitler.

(Excerpted with permission from Luciano Wernicke's The Most Incredible Olympic Stories; published by Niyogi Books)